My grandsire tell me he get this from his grandsire, so’s ye can bet it’s old. Old-time medicine’s better’n new.”The pain, indeed, dissipated immediately. “It’s workin’, all right—thanks!” Sary said.Wilbur applied some tape to hold the poultice in place, and promised, “Ye’ll be fine in a jiffy. If ye’re wonderin’, this be nothin’ scarcely more than some mashed up tar root.”“That’s all?” Sary questioned.“Wal, plus mixed in is a bit’a this and a dab’a that,” and he pointed to a glass cabinet full of small old-style medicine bottles. “Locust juice, snake heart, blue iris petals. It wucks, it does. Jess ye wait.”Sary wasn’t sure but she thought she glimpsed a few bottles of preserved toads, salamanders, and bats as well.With Wilbur’s first aid complete, the two of them engaged in further discourse, then, more full-bellied than she’d been in distant memory, Sary yawned. The day still shined brightly beyond the small, high windows, yet Wilbur needed no further clue to sense that she was whelmed by fatigue.
